Dad – long-term parenting

I have decided that sometimes we look a little too far ahead when we parent. It seems that a lot of people start at what they want the adult to look like and begin building their kid into that design. That approach is probably not wrong but I like to come at it from another angle.

They say babies learn the sounds for their parent’s language starting in the womb. From that foundation, they spend the rest of their lives building a vocabulary on top of that. I think learning behaviors is much the same.

Here is an example of what I call long-term parenting. A kid is about to walk out into the street with cars coming. You can either grab him and tell him “No! you were almost hit by a car” or tell him the same thing and add “that driver couldn’t see you and wouldn’t be expecting someone to cross the road without being at a crosswalk.”

With the first response, the kid learns that walking in front of moving cars is bad” (still a good lesson).. With the second, he learns the same thing but also to anticipate where danger MIGHT happened based on what the people around him are doing and thinking. Also that crossing a road anywhere but at a crosswalk is a bad idea.

Being cautious of your surroundings and the ability to place yourself in other’s minds will be invaluable in the future and all it took was a little explaining and changing one sentence into a couple.

Basically my approach is to teach my kid the way she should want to behave instead of trying to design her into the finished product we have in our heads. An added benifit is that I won't have to say no the next 10 times she gets into a dangerous situation because she is looking for danger instead of just cars.

The downside of my way of thinking is that I am only laying foundations for her to buildon top of (with help). What she builds will hopefully be a GREAT structure but it might not match what I thought it was going to be. When it gets down to it though, she is going to grow up to be her own person no matter how hard we try so at least this way, she will have a great foundation as her means of support.

Let me know what you think...